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AE 890 Calls 911

Started by stub, August 21, 2010, 01:49:58 AM

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stub

Hi Everyone,
                I just got a new ,to me, phone  from paul-f. It's a AE 890 rotary and touchtone phone, with the touch pad not working.
                The story starts out as usual with a new phone , fix it first then do all the clean up work. I took the touchpad apart, as shown in pic, found the problem and fixed it with some extra wire laying around. Now came the test , to dial and see what I got. It worked great. Now I was trying to hurry up and finish the fix on this phone and starting to reassemble I forgot to disconnect the phone !  I shorted out the touch pad 3 times while trying to hold it in place because the mounting tabs were broken off the base . Guess what number it dialed!!!!!!!!!!!    Yeah   9 1 1 !   I explained what happened to the 911 operator  and hung up.  Yeah 10 min. later there was a knock on the door and the sherriff was asking how this happened !!!!  I explained that I was a crazy telephone collector and was working on a broken touchpad. A good laugh and handshake and I was out of trouble!!!  Yeah, I'll unhook the rest of them from now on!!!!!!!!     stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

paul-f

Nice repair, Stub!

That dial is mechanically simpler than the WE dials, but seems to suffer from problems with misalignment or detachment of the wires going to the buttons.  I believe the design was retired fairly quickly due largely to field problems.  Its different design and scarcity make it a neat addition to a dial collection.
Visit: paul-f.com         WE  500  Design_Line

.

stub

#2
Paul-f,
         Thankyou for keeping a telephone like that.
          The touchpad , at one time in it's life, has been hit hard . The mounting tabs are broken off the case. I will have to replace it when I can find another touch pad.
           Do you know if the early touchpads , for AE 80's are the same?  I don't have an early one to compare it with. I would like to find one, busted of course, to look at.
            Thanks again .        stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

paul-f

I'll defer to Terry or one of the other AE experts on that one.

It would be interesting to know more about the history and uses of this dial.
Visit: paul-f.com         WE  500  Design_Line

.

Dave F

Quote from: stub1953 on August 21, 2010, 01:49:58 AM
Hi Everyone,
                 I just got a new ,to me, phone  from paul-f. It's a AE 890 rotary and touchtone phone, with the touch pad not working.
                 The story starts out as usual with a new phone , fix it first then do all the clean up work. I took the touchpad apart, as shown in pic, found the problem and fixed it with some extra wire laying around. Now came the test , to dial and see what I got. It worked great. Now I was trying to hurry up and finish the fix on this phone and starting to reassemble I forgot to disconnect the phone !  I shorted out the touch pad 3 times while trying to hold it in place because the mounting tabs were broken off the base . Guess what number it dialed!!!!!!!!!!!    Yeah   9 1 1 !   I explained what happened to the 911 operator  and hung up.  Yeah 10 min. later there was a knock on the door and the sherriff was asking how this happened !!!!  I explained that I was a crazy telephone collector and was working on a broken touchpad. A good laugh and handshake and I was out of trouble!!!  Yeah, I'll unhook the rest of them from now on!!!!!!!!     stub


Regarding your experience with the AE 890 calling 911, I had a similar thing happen to me.  A couple years ago, I bought a R-Tec credit card payphone (see pic), which has a set of pre-programmed speed-dial buttons on the front near the bottom.  Not having any tech literature, I hooked it up to the phone line and started pushing buttons, just to see what would happen.  Well, as I should have expected, one of the buttons must have dialed 911, and I had the very same conversation as you with the 911 dispatcher.  About 15 minutes later, I looked out my back window and there stood two Culver City (California) cops, one with his gun drawn.  It's good to know that the police around here take 911 calls seriously, but it took a bit of nervous time to get the situation straightened out.  I invited the cops inside, and they got a kick out of seeing some of my cool old phones.  The moral of the story is - always be careful when using a pre-programmed automatic dialer when you don't know the numbers it is dialing!

Dennis Markham

Stub, your phone is very interesting and I'm glad you have it and posted it here for the rest of us to see. 

I enjoyed reading both yours and Dave's stories about a visit from the local police after an accidental 9-1-1 call.  I have been on the other end of many (too many) of those calls during my career as a police officer.  99.9% of them are accidental....people programming their new phones, kids playing with the phone, etc.  Some are humorous, some are not.  Some are real but most accidental.  But I think just about every police agency takes them seriously.  To not follow-up on a call, even when the caller says it was accidental is a real liability to the Municipality.

Good to see they're doing their job in your communities.

By the way Dave, welcome to the forum.  Your phone is also interesting.  Share with us some more of your collection.  Great looking phone.

~Dennis

Dave F

Thanks Dennis, it's nice to be included.  I have one question:  As this is officially a "Rotary Phone" forum, is there any official policy about discussing Touch Tone phones?  Many of my nicest items are Touch Tone, but I don't want to bore anybody who thinks it's inappropriate to share them here.

Dennis Markham

Dave, despite the title of the Forum, we are open to discussing "even" touch tone phones!  We also talk about foreign phones too, despite the "America's"....so feel free to discuss whatever phones you're collecting.  Now if we get into cell phones.............. :)



stub

Hi,
        Welcome to the forum Dave . Enjoyed your story also!!!!!!!!!  Nice phone !
         Dennis-  Thanks
         I finished work on the dial today,super glued on new plastic for the mounting tabs. It works, but # 6 is a little weak.
         Now comes the hard work polishing!!!!!!!!!     stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

AE_Collector

#9
That is a hard touchpad to find. The earliest one from AE and as Paul mentioned, I don't think it took them long to redesign it to correct a bunch of problems. Then a few years later (by the 80E era) they redesigned it again using IC's but didn't learn from the past because the new touchpad had lots of problems as well.

I think your best solution Ken is the one you took, extensive repairs to solve the problem as you would buy a lot of old looking TC AE sets on ebaY before you would find one with that touchpad. And then you would want to keep the 80 WITH the old touchpad as part of your AE collection anyway.

The AE 890 is a very unique phone to have in your collection. Not an awful lot of them out there but if you keep searching ebaY, you will eventually find one. Mine is a "Sand Beige" phone as well.

As for autodial buttons calling 911, they made the number short enough that it really doesn't need to be on an autodial button but people still do it for some reason! I think it leads to potential false calls to 911 having 911 programmed on a button that would otherwise rarely if ever be used.

As for inadvertently dialing 911, it is amazing some of the things that can happen. Doing telephone line repairs for the Telco that I work for, I have actually had several subscribers tell me that their misbehaving phone line had called 911.  A line that is wet t othe point that it is shorting the line out of service can seize and release dial tone many many times. It isn't that far fetched for it to actually dial 911 or some other number but of course a 3 digit number is a lot easier to dial than a 7 or 10 digit number. As to what seizing and releasing the line has to do with dialing a number, see the other thread on this forum somewhere where there is a discusion about hook switch dialing...very do-able with a bit of practice!

Terry

AE_Collector

Quote from: Dave F on August 23, 2010, 01:54:40 PM
Thanks Dennis, it's nice to be included.  I have one question:  As this is officially a "Rotary Phone" forum, is there any official policy about discussing Touch Tone phones?  Many of my nicest items are Touch Tone, but I don't want to bore anybody who thinks it's inappropriate to share them here.

We talk about ROTARY engines that "Never were" in Chevy Vega's too so I wouldn't worry about an occasional Touch Tone or Touch Call phone discussion!

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=3250.0

Terry

stub

Terry,
          Thanks!!!  I have it working for now or till the copper strips oxidize and I have to clean it again. 
           Dave - I think we work on just about anything!!!!!!!   Thanks   stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

Dave F

Hi All, and thanks for your warm welcome to this forum.  Looks like plenty of friends to "meet" and lots to talk about.

Concerning the speed-dial buttons on the R-Tec payphone:  It appears that some of the buttons were programmed with special codes which were not intended to be actual phone numbers, but were some sort of access / account codes for special use.  The string of touchtones generated by pushing some of the buttons is much longer than it would be for any normal phone number.  Apparently, one of those codes just happened to begin with the numbers 9-1-1, and that's what resulted in the police looking into my window!

The manufacturer, R-Tec Systems, seems to be long-gone now.  I have done a pretty extensive search and have even managed to contact a former employee, but I have not been able to dig up any schematics or a programming manual.  The phone is computer-controlled, and there are some DIP Switches inside on the main circuit board, but I/m afraid to touch anything and possibly render it inoperable until I can someday find a manual.

Dave F.

PS: Coincidentally, I just won an AE890 on eBay two nights ago.  Can't wait to see it.  It is a pretty cool and uncommon phone.

stub

Dave-F,
            Did you get the one from  linm47  ?  If you did that was a very nice one . It was a lot better shape than mine.  If you have any problems with it  let me know and I'll help if I can.   stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

Dave F

Hi Stub,

Yes, I got tha one from linm47 on a Buy-It-Now.  It was kinda expensive but, as you noted, it looked to be in really good shape.  In fact, I think it's the nicest looking specimen of that phone I have seen.  We'll have to see when it arrives whether it's just as good on the inside.

I collect mainly W.E. items, but occasionally something nifty from another manufacturer is just too cool to let go by.  I can hardly wait until my wife sees the 890 - She's gonna just shake her head and roll her eyes, and pretend that she's unaccustomed to the odd things I manage to dig up!

Dave F.